Don’t worry about people stealing your design ideas. Worry about the day they stop.

Mobile is today’s first screen. So design responsively, focusing on content and structure first.

Websites and apps alike should remove distractions and let people interact as directly as possible with content.

90 percent of design is typography. And the other 90 percent is whitespace.

Boost usability and pleasure with progressive disclosure: menus and functions that appear only when needed.

One illustration or original photo beats 100 stock images.

Design your system to serve your content, not the other way around.

Remove each detail from your design until it breaks.

Style is the servant of brand and content. Style without purpose is noise.

Nobody waits. Speed is to today’s design what ornament was to yesterday’s.

Don’t design to prove you’re clever. Design to make the user think she is.

Project management is like sweeping up after the elephants, only less glamorous.

Don’t worry about people stealing your design. Worry about the day they stop.

Ryan Michael Kelly

A top-tier fashion photographer, Ryan Michael Kelly’s work captivates élite brands known to never settle. Clients like Vogue, Elle, and Nike seek him out, embracing the rush of visual impact his art conveys.

Ryan’s extensive portfolio need only be front-and-center, invisibly translated into a structure seamlessly fast and free of needless distractions. Obtrusive navigation and ornaments could serve no part; the catalog is quality deserving simplicity.

We’ve collaborated with Ryan on three redesigns during the past eight years—most recently a new iteration future-focused as never before. The underlying framework would reflexively suit evolving goals and needs at any given point, accommodating his work long term with few requirements, yet allow sheer quantity to flourish. It would embody technological foresight years at the ready.

We removed everything unnecessary for viewing images. Visitors experience full bleed visuals and incredibly fast page loads thanks to the use of special preloading mechanisms—phenomenal considering the homepage loads more than 150 hi-res images. Even better, the site was built with fiber optic connections in mind, enabling changeover to ultra-hi-res imagery with the flip of a switch.

Management of the site is completely handled in WordPress.

Our responsibilities on this project

Development of a custom image-arrangement algorithm, ensuring that anyone on Ryan’s staff could upload photography and know it would always display perfectly.